


galatea

by k_no_b



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Art, F/M, NejiTen Month 2020, POV First Person, Prompt Fic, Sculpture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25945558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/k_no_b/pseuds/k_no_b
Summary: In which an artist's passion brings a statue to life - or, perhaps, vice versa.
Relationships: Hyuuga Neji/Tenten
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	galatea

_galatea._

I begin as something without form, a broad expanse of white stone, flecked with imperfections and chipped edges. I am brought, against my will, by _him_ to a workshop where I am then set in the center of the room, like a centerpiece.

For several days, all he can do is circle me, eyes narrowed and watchful as he studies my blemished rock. His gaze is disconcerting and I do not like it at first—I know what is his aim: to undress me, to shave me down into something provocative or bizarre. I miss the mountain where I was quarried—a part of nature and wildness. But I was extracted, taken from that peaceful place, bought and sold and brought here to this small room where all the windows are kept open.

He never closes the windows. At first, I wonder at this, because it is not yet summer, and it has been a breezy, chilly spring. Then, one day, I notice the birdseed he has stashed underneath his worktable. He sets it out in the mornings in a wide bowl. Birds flock to it, singing lovely, doleful sounds, sweet lulls and upbeat chirps and deep-throated clicks. As he works to uncover my form, I watch him turn his ear to the sound, a thread of peace weaving itself along his forehead. It is a wrinkle I quickly grow attached to.

There is a reverence, a quiet passion he carries in his shoulders, in his arms, in his hands. I feel respected when he approaches me—for the first few weeks, he does nothing but sit before my block of stone, simply staring. Each morning, he enters the workshop and kneels before me with expectancy, as if he's waiting for me to voice my opinion.

I sit there, saying nothing, revealing nothing. He could make me into anything he desires—a symbol, a memory, a piece of architecture. But it would be a half-done creation, for I am none of those things, at my stone's core.

I see it in his strange eyes, when he makes his decision, a week or two after my arrival. He stands before me, arms crossed, gaze sweeping along my sharp edges. The corner of his mouth lifts, and something settles within me, a knowing satisfaction that he has seen my true form.

* * *

He takes his time freeing me of my excess stone. He starts with my feet, giving me sturdy, if slender, legs, feet that are set solidly on the ground. I appreciate that—that he remembers I am grounded by nature.

It is clear he is unsure what to do with my torso and waist—he leaves me in a chunky, haphazard state for weeks, instead focusing on my back. The tools in his hands jar against the planes of my stone, cracking me open. I grow to like the feel of it—the strikes of the hammer, the sharp peeling and gripping and pruning of the various chisels. I am shaped by steel in his guided hand, a creation brought forth by force.

He has a way with his hands. He is neither too forceful nor too light, using ever muscle of his fingers to gently push and mold and shape me into what I am. Once, someone with the same peculiar eyes as him comes into the workshop to check on his progress. They call him a genius, eyes swimming with water as they stare at me. He does not answer, though I can tell he is pleased with their words, a small, impish smirk touching his mouth.

I wonder at that word—genius. Is he a prodigy of some sort, this craftsman of stone? He does not seem like anyone incredibly important. He works alone and eats alone. He has only ever had the one visitor. Surely if he were an eminent person he would be more busy, be accompanied by a crowd?

It puzzles me. I wait impatiently for his visitor to leave and nearly sigh with relief when they do, expectant for his touch. He does not move towards me immediately, leaning against his worktable, watching me. His mouth purses with a frown, appraising me, as if he is waiting for me to answer the question that alights on his brow. There is a thrill within me as he sets aside his coffee mug and approaches me, wiping his hands on a towel. He places his hands on me, and I know, deep inside, that he is ready now to shape the rest of me—my hips, my stomach, my chest. And though these are experiences I have been waiting for, I am most looking forward to when he will finally meet my eyes.

* * *

Summer arrives during his work on my middle. It has given him some trouble, outlining my torso. He spends a few days paging through a few books, eyes glancing from the pages of references to myself, his forehead creased with bewilderment. I am thrown by his hesitation—he works with a singular kind of focus, undeterred by challenges, unwavering in progress.

Finally, he pushes the books away and sits down at the bench in front of me, hands clenched into fists in his lap. He gazes up at me, at the blank slate of my head, and lets his eyes trail down to the narrowness of where my waist should be, that he has already begun to form. He swallows and reaches out, laying his hands flat against the block where my stomach should be. His palms move across the stone, back and forth, like he's searching for my shape underneath the layers of rock. I wish I could take his hands, show him the silhouette I desire, but he has not yet freed my arms from the marble.

With a breath, he slowly pulls away, hand straying to his tools. Sheepishly, he grasps the rough frame of my waist and sets the tip of his hammer at my hidden hip. His eyes lift once more, scanning my blank features for permission, and then begins.

* * *

One night late in the summer, it is sweltering inside the workshop. The windows are open like always, not even a whiff of a breeze blowing through. He has been working these last few weeks in his usual loose shirts, pushed up to his elbows, forearms covered in sweat and stone dust. But tonight is a different kind of heat altogether. He is halfway through his work for the evening, slimming and polishing my hands, when he gets to his feet abruptly.

He strides to his worktable and takes a drink of water from his canteen. When he sets it down again, his fingers twitch along the hem of his shirt, and then he is throwing it off, casting it aside onto the table. When he turns back to me, I am shocked by what greets me.

His entire chest is marred—deep, grotesque stretches of red and purple and pink. He returns to me and sits on his bench before me, arms loose at his sides. I cannot look away from his scars. It seems a wonder he is even breathing, from the hurt that has clearly been done to him. The skin of his throat, his arms, his face, is pale, but against his injury he is a mottled thing, ugly and fearsome. I ache for him—for whatever has been done to ruin the perfect condition of his body.

Slowly, he reaches out and slides his hands up the slopes of my thighs, the part of me he has only just finished polishing in the last few days. I hear him inhale, lips parting slightly as his fingers trail up over my hipbones. He pauses there for a moment, the pads of his fingers pressing hard into the unforgiving bones of my waist that he has so lovingly and thoughtfully shaped. He shifts his grip to my waist, squeezing me in his hands.

I feel centered and powerful, held there by him, watching as his eyes drink me in, studying every small imperfection, every crafted detail. He exhales and his breath stirs across my chest. If stone could shiver, I would.

I lose track of time, how long he sits there beholding me. But the night trips on, moonlight spilling through the windows, making shadows on the floor. There is something to this, I think—a creation studying her creator. I see glimpses of myself in him, now, in the pointed attention he has paid to my hands and my arms—gifting me with a sure strength I can feel resonating through my form. He possesses a precision that he has passed onto me somehow, in the way he has created me with focus, with eyes that see everything. If only I could speak, ask him all the questions that swim beneath my skin—

He shakes himself from his reverie suddenly, clearing his throat. With a sigh, he removes his hands from me and reaches for his tools, turning his gaze aside to my wrist. He sets the file along the bones of my left wrist and leans in, once again absorbed by his work.

The next day, he begins on my chest, his hand brushing light glances over the dip between my breasts, never quite looking them in the eye as he works. Inwardly, I smirk at the blush that graces his cheeks all day.

He grows more comfortable the longer he works on a particular section, confidence spilling out as he files and chisels and tweaks. He is mercilessly attentive to my neck. He stands so close I can feel every breath on my cheek, still roughly carved, but a cheek nonetheless. Once, I even feel his lips brush against the thin line of my collarbone; it fills me with an excitement I cannot name. I wish he would form my mouth or nose already, so I could have the pleasure of that sensation fully realized with all my senses.

As he inches closer and closer to sculpting my face into something refined, he finally begins to speak to me. I like his voice. It is steady and quiet, saying only what is required, not a syllable more. There is a lilt he gets sometimes, no doubt a hearkening back to another time when perhaps he was younger, greener. It is a tone that is shaded darker and sharper, pointed in the direction of disappointment and hurt.

He begins to meditate aloud on what he will call me, and it is almost sweet, the way he thinks of things. "Not that you need a name," he softly explains one late afternoon, smirking privately. "Everyone will be speechless when they look at you anyway."

It is a compliment that deeply pleases me.

* * *

He spends ages on my face, carefully brushing away every fleck of dust that graces my smooth cheekbone, running his thumb along the rounded bend of my chin. I have noticed it before, of course, but it strikes me anew with his proximity—his eyes are beautiful. They are nearly the same shade as my skin, nacreous and steady, gazing at me with a narrowness I sometimes find too focused.

His fingers often find purchase on my throat as he stands before me, lost in thought, as he considers my features. This close to him, I can feel the unrelenting dedication that courses through him, his face angled towards mine. He is close enough to kiss, but he has yet to fully shape my mouth.

As the workshop cools with the arrival of autumn, he begins to come each day with a palpable agitation underneath his skin. He strides quickly inside in the mornings, shrugging off his coat and brusquely pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. He moves towards me and hovers inches from my face, chest rising and falling with erratic breaths. He picks up tools and sets them down, walks away from me and returns, arms crossed, then falling to his sides.

I can sense it within him—the desire to finish, the doubt that I will not be what he has imagined in his head, the suspicion that he cannot deliver me perfectly into completion. I want to allay his uncertainty; he has already done me more justice than I could have ever hoped for, all those months ago being freed from the mountain.

He wiles away his time sitting apart from me at his worktable, shooting glances at me over his shoulder. My nose is done, a thin and pointed feature, and my mouth, though still unpolished, has at least been given its proper attention and form.

He has carved out my eyes but has yet to give them sight. I can sense he is waiting for something, a stroke of inspiration or merely the courage to move forward. He is infuriatingly reluctant; I am desperate to be seen.

He spends a full week, morning to evening, tending to things that are needless—sweeping the workshop floor, tidying his table, methodically cleaning his tools, re-polishing my toes or my calves or my forearms when they are fine as they are. I want to shake him out of his inaction, force him to look me in the eyes.

Another few days pass where he does not touch me at all, apparently unable to bring himself to it. He busies himself with another project in the corner, a small bust of a head. I notice he has no trouble dealing with the eyes of _that_ statue, and it makes me angry with him. I contemplate cracking a section of my stone at his next touch, only to prove to him that I also can be temperamental.

At the end of the week, on a particularly blustery fall morning, he enters the shop with a look of resolve. He slips out of his coat like always and then approaches me tentatively, as if he recognizes I am not happy with him. Slowly, he lifts his hand and grazes my cheek. He sweeps his touch over my brow, caressing the molded state of my hair which he has shaped into a chignon. Fingers whisper down the back of my neck and I shiver from the bottoms of my feet to the top of my head, every bit of me pricking to attention. His stare is so lovely it makes me want to move—walk off the plinth I stand upon and take him by the arms, let my touch dance along his skin instead of the other way around.

He sinks onto his bench and cups his hands around my calves, breathing deeply as he sets his forehead against my smooth knees. If only I could run my fingers through his hair! I hear him say, mouth forming the words against my cool marble, "You are heavenly. How did I—?" He trails off, shaking his head at his unfinished thought.

I forgive him for his absence, wishing he would please, please stand and look at me fully again with that knowing gaze, that impish smirk.

With another sigh, he gets to his feet, letting his hands trail up the back of my thighs to the small of my back, all the way up, up, to hold my neck. His gaze is hard, unflinching, resting on the place where he will bring my eyes to life. He says nothing but I do not need him to.

* * *

Once he begins, he cannot seem to stop. He spends hours defining my pupils, smoothing the arch of my brow, refining my irises. I am but marble, yet I feel like he is carving me into living, breathing existence with each brushstroke and finely chiseled mark. He gets lost in it, in me, staying with me late into the night, far past the time he usually departs the workshop for home.

The evening takes on a dewy tint, cocooning us in a world where we are the only beings, merely a breath apart. He finally winds down a few hours away from dawn, setting his tools down tiredly. I expect him to gather his things and go, but he simply draws his coat tight around him and lays his head on his worktable. He is still gazing at me when his eyes slip closed.

When he wakes late the next morning, it is raining outside. He opens his eyes sleepily and blinks a few times before sitting up, turning his attention to the drops falling outside the open window. There is no birdsong this morning, only the wet sounds of rain hitting the path outside, the _plink_ of it hitting the roof.

Wordlessly, he stretches out his hand and lets a few raindrops kiss his palm. He presses his fingers to his face and wipes the sleep from his eyes. He rises from his table and walks over to me. His palm spreads up my arm, over the curve of my shoulder to rest along the side of my face. A smile pushes at my lips; he has left a trail of rainwater along my skin, smearing me with it. "Good morning," he murmurs into my ear, thumb swiping underneath my right eye. He reaches for his chisel and resumes where he'd left off the night before.

He doesn't eat for two days. He subsists off coffee in the morning, water at midday, and tea in the evenings, which he drinks intermittently as he works, often leaving his mug behind in a stroke of inspiration as he rushes to eke out his desire. I warn him with pursed, frozen lips that he should take a break—a real one—that I'm not going anywhere. But he ignores me, singularly focused on shading my eyes to perfection, giving them coyness and determination and sternness and a teasing glow. He sleeps a handful of nights at his worktable, sometimes rising in the middle of the night to stray to my side, clutching my hand, rubbing my cheek, brushing against my thigh, before returning to bed.

It continues to rain. I watch the water come down in gray sheets outside, shiver from the wet, cold air that dampens everything in the workshop. He has still not closed the windows—I wonder if he ever does, even in winter.

It is an arduous process—getting my eyes right. He barely breathes as he leans in to round out the sharp edges, smoothing them into flowing curves and delicate lines. He makes shadows along my brow, drawing them down into the corners of my eyes, carefully attaching them to my eyelids so they will catch the light and naturally deepen them.

I can tell he is almost finished when he uses the fine chisel less and less, opting instead to rub sandpaper over my legs and arms and along the expanse of my torso. I can feel myself become brighter, smoother beneath his deliberate work. I eagerly await the day he can no longer find anything else to critique with his metal tools.

There is another who comes to see him, in his final days of work, with the same eyes that he and his last guest possess. The visitor does not fully enter the workshop, instead choosing to stand in the doorway. They look at me, I look at them. I do not like the slight frown around their mouth, the disapproving crease of their brow.

He stiffens from where he crouches before me, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder. A few of his tools drop to the ground at my feet as he abruptly stands and turns his back to me, facing the intruder.

They say nothing to him, for a time, looking past him to analyze my figure. When he finally does speak, it is as cold as the late autumn breeze. "So, this is what you've been working on, all this time."

There is a tension in his shoulders that concerns me; he does not answer.

His guest goes on, "It is not wise to become so obsessed with a project. You should take a break for a few days—come down to the house and stay with us."

"She's not finished yet," he replies in an unbending tone. He tilts his head up a little in defiance; the lilt from his childhood is back.

His visitor's eyes sweep again over my form. "It looks finished to me. What else do you have to complete?"

He turns quickly back to me. His expression is one of unmitigated irritation, his mouth nothing more than a slash. His eyes float over my features and something in him softens, though a confusion settles on his forehead like a crown. He mutters, "I—there's a lot left for me to do."

I can tell he is lying. I myself feel as if I am on the cusp of breaking free of the marble that grounds me, like I could turn my head to stare directly out the window or steady myself with a deep breath. I want to tell him so—that he has skillfully uncovered me from the block of stone I once was, that I am now fully revealed, ready to be beheld by whomever, but mostly him.

But he merely shakes his head and faces his guest, who says, "Come along. Take a break. Rest is vital to creativity."

He clenches his fist but after a second the fight leaves him. He reaches out and casts a sheet over my form, hiding me from sight. His eyes are the last thing I see before I am covered, filled with regret.

* * *

I wait for three days in the dark of the workshop. Underneath the sheet it is dark and smells musty, like dust and sandpaper and oil. I can distantly hear the birds chirping, though their sounds are muffled—he'd closed the windows before he'd left.

I feel itchy all over, across my skin, deep in my bones, at the back of my neck. I feel the ghostly impression of his fingertips and tense, wishing for his touch. I wonder what he is up to at that house he has departed to. Does he think of me like I think of him? Does he regret forming me from a block of stone? Why does he take so long to return? Will he ever come back, or will he leave me like this, hidden away for all eternity?

I will myself to move—to lift my left leg and then my right, to step off the foundation where he has grounded me and go running down the path, searching for his pale eyes. He would be surprised, I think, to see me striding towards him with my resolute gaze, the very one he so carefully cultivated.

I fantasize about that moment. I would press my fingertips to his forehead, wind them through his hair, push my nose against his and breathe in deep the scent of his skin—a dizzying mix of coffee and tea and marble dust and petrichor. His hand would glide up my spine and hold the back of my neck, chest surging against mine as he inhaled deeply, turning his mouth to the spot where my jaw flows into my throat. I close my eyes and dream about it, lost in the allure.

* * *

His return is heralded by his footsteps on the wet pavement outside. I hear him pause in the doorway, no doubt studying if anything has gone amiss. He slowly sets down his bag with a dull thud on the worktable. His fingers unlatch the windows; they creak open and then the birdsong resounds around me, clear and welcome after three days of near-silence.

I wait expectantly as his feet move towards me, holding my breath as he stops before me. His hand ghosts along the fabric of the sheet, and then he is tugging on it ever so slightly, letting it slip off and fall to the ground.

He looks more well-rested than he has been for weeks, but there is a hunger in his eyes I cannot shake, a fiery desperation that has deepened in our parting. He swallows and stares at me, arms hanging limply at his sides. I wait.

He opens his mouth to speak, but then gives a quick shake of his head, deeming his words too insignificant to say aloud. Instead, he grasps my waist, as if he longs to pull me to him. I smile, but he is not looking at my mouth, his gaze on the fingers he has pressed to my skin. That look of pain and grief has returned to his face, a dissatisfaction lingering at his eyes.

With a deep breath, he lifts his eyes to mine and steps forward, balancing his feet on the edge of my plinth. He is so close to me, so achingly within my possession that I almost begin crying from the longing of it.

His fingers graze up the length of my arm and touch my neck, cupping the line of my jaw, brushing my earlobe. He blinks slowly, peering into the depths of my eyes, and he sees, I think. He finally sees.

With a sigh, he leans forward and brushes his lips against mine, a warm and firm pressure. I smile against his mouth and slide my arms around his neck. He gasps and I cling to him tighter, holding him to me. His hands float down to my waist, fingertips lingering in wonder. When he pulls back slightly, shaking his head in bewilderment, he whispers, "How is it possible? Is it real?"

I smile and tell him, "It is."

**Author's Note:**

> This one-shot was inspired by the myth of [Pygmalion and Galatea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_\(mythology\)), the statue he creates and falls in love with.
> 
> A very special thanks to [veena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veenaistired/pseuds/veenaistired) who beta'd for me! <3
> 
> This is technically for NejiTen Month Day 17 - "Passion", but I guess you could apply it to some of the other prompts. I'm no good at prompts lol, but I hope you liked it anyway! Let me know if you had *thoughts*.
> 
> Happy NejiTen Month 2020!


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